Re: Never-converge-itis (was Re: XML matters for the Web - and thebrowser)

[Dave Winer <dave@userland.com>]

>>RSS is wonderful stuff, and I'm happy to talk about it.  However, RSS
solves about 1.5% of what people were asking for at WEB2001.

Two approaches to that:

1. Ask them to start using what we have now, work with the developer
community that's working in RSS, and one step at a time, get more of what
you want. The mail lists tend to be dominated by techies. It takes courge
for designers to speak up, but when they do, we listen. Our tools mean
nothing if they are not useful to them.

2. Now what if what they want is unreasonable or somehow can't work? An
analogy. Someone says "I want ice cream and I want to eat it in my car."
Well, for some reason you can't eat it in the car, you can only eat it in a
restaurant. Do you say to them "Sorry you can't have what you want," or do
you say "Well if you really want ice cream you can have it but you can't eat
it in your car?"

I've been having this discussion with the Web2001-types for quite a few
years. One by one they get the idea that ice cream in the restaurant is
pretty tasty. Some people just like to complain. I haven't figured out how
to erase them from the universe yet, but I'd like to. ;->

Anyway I were on that panel I would have said "Let's focus on things we can
do, we all know how frustrating it is to not be able to do things we can't.
No news there."

Dave